The letter affair in the German Olympic Sports Confederation (DOSB) and its consequences are drawing ever wider circles.
According to DOSB President Alfons Hörmann, whose successor will be clarified at the general meeting on December 4th in Weimar, the chairwoman of the board, Veronika Rücker (51), will also resign on December 31st.
The DOSB announced this on Friday in a joint statement by Hörmann and Rücker.
The presidium of the DOSB and Rücker agreed on “an amicable end of the cooperation” on Thursday evening, it said.
This will enable "a new staffing also in the area of the main office".
Rücker came into the focus of criticism after an explosive letter from former DOSB board member Karin Fehres was made public on Wednesday, which she had addressed to the DOSB committees on Tuesday.
In it, Fehres stated that Hörmann and other top representatives around Rücker had urged her to admit that she was the author of the anonymous letter of May 6, in which the umbrella organization under Hörmann's leadership assumed a "culture of fear" June announced his withdrawal.
At the same time, Fehres denied having written that letter.
Examination by language expert
Fehres, DOSB board member for sport development until the end of November 2020, wrote to the address of the DOSB presidium and DOSB board as well as the spokespersons of the association groups that on October 13th you were from a Berlin law firm on behalf of Hörmann and the DOSB as an association , represented by the board members Rücker and Thomas Arnold, were threatened with criminal charges and civil law suits.
Hörmann and Rücker said on Friday that “our association and Sport Germany as a whole” had “suffered considerable damage” from the anonymously raised allegations. It was seen "as our duty and responsibility to investigate the authorship and background of the anonymous writing". After the examination by a language expert, the legal advisers' assessment was followed and "two attempts to clarify out of court with the former board member have now been made public."
According to a recommendation by the ethics committee at the end of October, the board of directors and Hörmann decided, “in order not to let the process escalate further”, “not to take any further legal steps”.
They are "still convinced that it was fundamentally correct and that it was our responsibility to investigate the background of the letter in order to protect the DOSB," says the Hörmann and Rücker statement.
The president and chairman of the board "assume full responsibility for this entire process, in which the board of directors and individual members of the presidium were only partially involved. This applies in particular to the letter from the lawyer, the content of which has only been approved by us."